CONWAY — CORE Performance Company, a professional dance company led by Sue Schroeder, will premiere its “Moving Toward Health” project, a collaborative effort with the University of Central Arkansas, during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week Feb. 20-24.

The week of events will include company dancers meeting with students, faculty and staff of UCA and Hendrix College; students, teachers and administrators in the Conway Public School system; staff and students at the Blackbird Academy of the Arts; members of the Faulkner County Healthy Weight Coalition and members of the Conway Regional Health and Fitness Center to promote communication and education through movement.

The CORE Performance Company website at www.coredance.org states, “The mission of MTH is to use dance to talk about health and to raise awareness of body image, healthy lifestyle and disordered eating.”

The company will perform its narrated dance, “Food and Feelings: Listening to Your Body”, for third- and fourth-grade students in seven Conway elementary schools to encourage children’s self-awareness and positive body images and will offer several post-performance workshops to elementary students to complement the performance. The book, Full Mouse Empty Mouse, by Dr. Dina Zeckhausen, inspired the dance. Zeckhausen will also be in Conway to lead a workshop for Conway teachers addressing the book and the dance work.

The company will also offer four public performances of “Body as Image” to the UCA and Conway community to complement UCA art professor Donna Pinckley’s work on display in the Baum Gallery. Her exhibition is titled New Work: Color Portraits. The CORE performances will be in the Baum Gallery at UCA on Thursday, Feb. 23, at 5, 5:30, 6 and 6:30 p.m. These performances will be free. Timed tickets will be handed out at the Baum Gallery beginning at 4:30; viewing is limited.

CORE Performance Company will lead two public panel forums and numerous workshops working with students from the dietetics, psychology, art, theatre and film departments at UCA. The public is invited to join CORE for a free forum addressing “Artmaking for Social Change” at the Faulkner County Library on Feb. 21 at 7 p.m.

Zeckhausen will present a free public lecture for addressing disordered eating in the college community on Feb. 22 at the UCA Student Center 215 at 6 p.m.

According to the website, “With this project we are embodying the arts’ ability to engender communication and to facilitate change in the context of social issues. We are engaging the Conway community through meetings, workshops and forums and by creating and performing a new dance work…”

This presentation is supported by Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arkansas Arts Council and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

This project is made possible by funding from Alternate ROOTS and the Ford Foundation through the ROOTS Tour & Residency Program. Additional funding is provided by the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Department of Heritage.

The project is also funded by UCA Center for Community and Economic Development, UCA Arts Fee through the Artists in Residence Program, UCA Office of Student Services, UCA Office of Sponsored Programs, UCA Student Dietetic Association, Faulkner County Healthy Weight Coalition and Conway Public Schools.

For more details and information about CORE Performance Company, visit www.coredance.org. For more information about the “Moving Toward Health” project, contact Gayle Seymour, associate dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication, at 501-450-3295 or by email at gayles@uca.edu